This photo of Banksy graffiti was taken last week close to the Hackney Road in Bethnal Green, London. During the most recent round of bombs attacks in London one of the bombers left the rucksack containing a bomb on the number 26 bus. Tenuous link to this picture, no?

I was surprised at the amount of people who have said they were close to, or at or on one of the routes taken by the bombers, displaced by time and/or location by some degree. The relative success of terrorism to affect or frighten people is enhanced by peoples ability to assume ‘it could have been me’, rather than other factors such as sympathy for the victims.

People will increasingly have the ability to track where they have been. Currently on mobile phones this can easily be done through base station triangulation or through GPS. In the future the granularity of information available to users will be enhanced by everyday interactions such as a log of purchases made with their phone (already available through Sony Edy here in Japan) or downloads from nearby content servers. Combined with increased tracking and sensors means that we will assumedly we will be able to trace the route of either the terrorists, or the packages they are carrying after the event. Will the ability to compare your route with that of a bomb and bombers magnify or reduce the affect of terrorists acts?